January
By Isaac Hanna, Natalia Maza, Maereg Million & Vivian Munton
January 1: New Year’s Eve
By Vivian
As we all know, New Year’s Eve is a very popular holiday, but you may only know about some traditions. People all over the world celebrate this holiday in very different ways.
A tradition that started in Spain and has made its way to other Spanish speaking countries in Central and South America is the tradition called uvas de la suerte, meaning “lucky grapes”. In this tradition people celebrate the coming of the new year by eating twelve green grapes when midnight arrives. The twelve grapes represent the twelve months of the year, and eating all twelve grapes helps ward off bad luck in the new year.
In Denmark people celebrate the coming of the new year by smashing plates on the doorstep of their friends and family. The more pieces of smashed plates you have on the doorstep, the luckier and better liked you are.
And lastly, a tradition in Columbia is to run around the block as fast as you can, with an empty suitcase. This is supposed to symbolize travel in the coming year, and will hopefully be possible this year!
Everyone celebrates New Year’s Eve a little differently, and it’s fun to learn about how others do it. How do you celebrate New Year’s Eve?
January 6: Three Kings Day
Info. from Natalia, put together by Isaac
This holiday, of Three Kings Day, is celebrated by Catholics on the night of January 5, because it is the day that the three wise men (kings), got to young Jesus after following the North Star to give him three gifts. The gifts were gold, murr, and incense. They gave him the gifts because they knew he was the Son of God. People eat the traditional bread that is called “rosca de reyes”.
January 7: Orthodox Feast of the Nativity
by Isaac
(I will be writing the part of the article from a Christian Orthodox point of view. This is the Orthodox faith.)
The Feast of Nativity is a feast celebrated on January 7. Along with all of the other Christian churches in the world, Orthodox churches celebrate The Feast of the Nativity (Christmas). During these feasts, the gospels in the Bible teaches about the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is significant because, as it is said in the gospels, that God became man and was born of St. Mary. The reason Christmas on December 25 and January 7, are two different dates is because of the two calendars being used: The Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar. People come home from church late at night, and eat a big meal with their family. (We discussed this topic with a lot more detail in the last issue – December 2020.)
January 18: MLK Day
By Maereg
As you all hopefully know, on January 18th we had no school to commemorate Martin Luther King. Here’s a little bit of history about this important holiday, and how it came to be:
In November of 1983, President Ronald Regan signed a bill to have a holiday in observance of the amazing Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The first federal MLK holiday was celebrated in 1986. It took some time for all states to adopt the holiday. By 1986 17 states had, but there was strong resistance to pass the holiday in the state of Arizona. The fight between state legislators came to a head when the King holiday was put up for an Arizona voter referendum in November 1990. A voter referendum is when a direct and universal vote, in which the entire electorate is asked to vote on a particular proposal, Which basically means a group of important voters get to decide/vote on a subject that has been brought to attention- In this case to make MLK day a state-wide holiday. It took Arizona voters 2 YEARS to approve the King holiday. There was also a fight in South Carolina over the holiday. It was one of the last states to approve a paid King holiday for state employees in 2000! That’s not even 25 years ago! The South Carolina governor, as well as other administrators wanted to combine it with alternative holidays and names, but finally in the end of 2000 the whole country remembered and celebrated the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the third Monday of January. After all that work let’s make sure we appreciate the work MLK has done for our country, and continue to make his dream-reality.
cited from www.history.com ; Google
January 6th/19th: Christian Epiphany/Theophany Feast
By Isaac
(Since I am Orthodox, I will be writing this from a Orthodox point of view, but all Christian churches celebrate this feast.)
The Feast Epiphany also known as the Theophany, is a major feast in all Christian churches. This feast celebrates the baptism of Jesus Christ in the Jordan River. Through the teachings in the Bible, Jesus was baptised by John, the baptist. This feast is also a very holy feast because the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were all seen during this day: There was a voice from Heaven from the Father that said “This is My Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”, the Holy Spirit with a sign from a dove, and The Son, because the Son is Jesus Christ, and he was there on earth.
Similar to the Christmas holiday, there are two different dates, but celebrating the same holiday. Again, the two calendars being used are the Julian Calendar and the Gregorian Calendar. (The Catholic church uses the Gregorian Calendar, and celebrates Epiphany on January 6th, while the Orthodox Church uses the Julian Calendar and celebrates Theophany [same as Epiphany] on January 19th.)